6 comments to Drama lang daw ang EDSA

So I have a few minutes to rub together, now that my internet has slowed down considerably. It’s a Saturday morning and still quiet where I sit and I’m thinking about the whys of things—specifically why we have a Philippines run like hell by Filipinos.

It may be old news, but haven’t you ever thought about how sad it is that, after several decades as a sovereign republic, we still have all the things wrong with how we are governed in the news?

Perhaps we really need to think longer and more deeply about the “why” of it. More importantly, perhaps we’d better find ways to be part of solving it instead of sticking our heads in the damned sand, eh? Okay, so I wish. Duh.

Don’t simply generalize and blame the electorate’s stupidity. It isn’t as simple as that. We wish it were that simple. Because a simple problem would necessarily have a simple solution. Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but nothing that has lasted so long is simple or straightforward. Like a loan that comes with more interest the longer the payment period takes, problems like the Gordian Knot that is the (vile) Philippine experience of governance costs more the longer it goes unaddressed, or, worse, perpetually partially addressed.

It isn’t JUST the fault of the power-hungry, in-it-for-themselves-and-their-dynasties people in public office. We, the people, are at fault, too. If they enjoy impunity, that’s because we grant it to them with our ballots, with our reticence to call them on their shit, with our preference for shortcuts and sweet, sweet words.

We don’t like facing the truths we find unpleasant. So we believe them when they promise us the sun, the moon, the stars, the jetski-trip to the Spratlys to plant the flag in disputed territory.

We don’t want to know the fine details of how they dispatch their duties (or people they name enemies of the state, you know, the ones who do the drugs they say they hate). We don’t want to care about the how. Isn’t it enough that we elected them? Doesn’t it begin and end there?

Sorry. It doesn’t. We refuse to see how they take our discontent and paint themselves with it, spray that discontent all over themselves like it was an atomizer full of pheromones and they want a good lay—yes, they want to fuck us (over), and they want us to consent. So they make it look like they’re just like us, that they feel our pain (why, of course they do, they calibrated it before inflicting it—or their dynastic ancestors did).

They tell us they hear us. But they don’t listen once they’ve got what they came for and we’re shoved out into the cold and told to shut up and put up with it. If that isn’t getting fucked, I don’t know what is. In this scenario, they’re the selfish fuckers who won’t even give you satisfaction while they take theirs.

And, like the chronically battered insignificant others we let ourselves be, we forgive them and their progeny and take them back into the fold—plunder and massive human rights violations (do you hear that, spawn of Marcos? Do you?) notwithstanding—we take them back into the fold. We delude ourselves that they will change for the better. We try to comfort ourselves with the thought that they at least did a good thing or three the last time they took us for the ride of our lives (and not in a good way). We still, in spite of all the proof to the contrary, believe them when they tell us they love us, our country and the world for which they seek peace. Lies. All of these are lies. They love themselves, their family interests and damn us for thinking otherwise. Why, just like most of us, they’re simply looking out for number one.

The difference between them and us, though, is that they have no other numbers following one. Apparently they can only count to one. Hmmmm.

Are these the people you trust to do the incredibly complex and difficult job of running a nation with people just like us in it? You know, the people who all want to be the exception to the laws (hand the traffic enforcer a Ninoy, just so we can wiggle our way out of that traffic ticket we so richly deserve). The people who want all the bells and whistles of a democracy while skipping the participation and cooperation getting those things take. Don’t believe me? Okay, so when was the last time you went to the barangay, municipal or city hall to check on the government services, ordinances and concerns of your community, town or city? Yeah? I rest my case.

When did you actually take what your government officials and functionaries had to say about “the rules” and “the needs” and “the things you can do” seriously and think about whether they got these things right or not? When was the last time you actually spoke up to tell government what you need (NEED, not want)? When was the last time you sat up and smelled the bullshit they fed you before swallowing it hook, line and sinker?

I remember how one jeepney driver answered my questions in a man-on-the-street interview I did prior to the elections in 2010: “Kahit naman sino maupo, hindot pa din tayo, eh [Whoever wins, we’re still fucked].” I couldn’t quote him in my story, but his comment stays with me. My follow up question, uttered in the vernacular, was this: “And why is that?”

His answer? “Wala kasing kadala-dala ang Pinoy. Ayaw ng pagbabago kung siya ang maagrabyado. Ayaw sumunod sa tama kung siya ay maabala. Maniniwala sa pangako na alam naman niyang mapapako kasi salat sa pag-asa. Kahit sa salita man lang, may tutuparing pangarap—kaso pangarap din yung pangtustos, hindi man lang maging katotohanan. [The Filipino never learns. He doesn’t want change if he is going to be on the losing end. He doesn’t want to follow what is right if it will inconvenience him. He’ll believe the empty promises because he lacks hope. He hopes for even just comforting words so he can dream—even if his dreams are answered with more dreams, even if these never become reality.]”

We fall into this trap: That our words are actions. That because we have spoken, we have taken action and done our part. In Tagalog: Hanggang salita lang. Then we want to be taken seriously. We want to see our dreams come to fruition just because we have spoken.

Yes, it has been said that “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.” However, we are not God, people. In Tagalong: Tao lang po. We may aspire to godliness (gee, probably because we resort to prayer so much and forget the work that must go with the prayer), but we don’t have that supernatural power of speaking things into being. Let’s not go usurping the throne of heaven, eh? Because I hear the Almighty is pretty accurate in aiming the lighting and electricity like that can kill or maim.

We avoid the things that are complicated, or difficult, or which add more work to our already overburdened plates—being underpaid and overworked, or not having enough work or pay will do that. We are too busy looking out for ourselves, trying to get ahead, fighting so mightily to keep head above water. We are too protective of our own interests to actually think clearly about what this nation of ours needs so that all of us can, in the end, prosper.

So, you see those carefully-laid plans of the leaders of political dynasties past are actually working. Their critical thinking has actually paid off: Keep the governed poor, struggling and divided and you can feed them all your bullshit with impunity. Make examples of the ones who don’t drink the political Kool Aid you serve up—all the better to make the others quail, shut up and obey your dictum. Don’t encourage their critical thinking. Don’t make it easy for them to check their facts or see the political sleight-of-hand that is the dark side of your job. Serve them just enough for them to think you’re actually doing your job—but not enough for them to have the luxury of time and full enough bellies to question what you do not do and what you don’t do right. Then promise them change, promise them that things will get better someday. When all else fails, blame the previous administration, tell them your predecessor was evil and had it in for them. That hat-trick has worked for decades. It’s still good for a few more uses.
Oh, and we also seem to think that our leaders will ALWAYS be right when we like them, just because we like them–and we also seem to think that the leaders we DON’T like will ALWAYS be wrong just because we don’t like them. Wrong: They are human and they will make mistakes, be mistaken and get things wrong. They will also have the luck of humans and actually get some things done right, said right, or said or done in ways we actually agree with, whether we like them or not.

But we need to be there and be part of the process of governance. We need to communicate with them and work with them–or kick their hindquarters when necessary. That’s how having freedom and sovereignty works. That’s how having a government of the people and for the people works. The people are the active ingredient. Without us, it doesn’t matter who sits in power–we will still get the short end of the stick and actually pay taxes to be short-shrifted thus. Opo, magigisa tayo sa sariling mantika. Nang paulit-ulit, forever and ever amen.

I am so tired of this house of mirrors that is our politics and government. Aren’t you? Don’t tell me this iteration of the government promised you change. I heard the same thing. And if you believe that, there’s this really pretty bridge spanning Samar and Leyte I’d like to sell you for singkong duling. Very cheap. No catch.

Well, okay, there is a catch: If you bite that offer, I’m going to laugh at you so hard you’d be offended by my sarcastic glee even if you were in the Andromeda galaxy (that’s right next door to the Milky Way where Earth is, by the way).

This whole sorry situation is so stupid I’d laugh, but then I’d be laughing at all our miseries and that just isn’t right. The worst thing about it is that the situation is mistake upon optimistic mistake on our part.

Sure, we know what’s happening. We probably even know why. But we’d rather have someone else fix it. We probably aren’t the right people to do this because we have our own lives.

Been out of circulation in the blog commenting for quite a while. Pressure from work and health issues, as usual, are the culprits. I post on FB for my relatives in the province na di updated sa tunay na nagyayari. Medyo di nila maabot ang mga English blogs, pero addict sila sa FB.

Government propaganda to denigrate EDSA 86 is crucial to Duterte’s goal of establishing a dictatorship.

You want to march in as conquering messiah, you must try to show that democracy doesn’t work — or is the root of the country’s problems.

That is Duterte’s biggest lie, his main act.

Don’t waste your time on the sideshows.

Our democracy is flawed, yes. Tyranny will only worsen the nation’s problems.

His charter change leads to just that.

His charter change has nothing to do with putting people first. Duterte has surrounded himself with many of the oligarchs, thieves, wheeler-dealers, feudal lords and urban and rural thugs who are a big part of our national woes.

Chacha is just one of the avenues he plans to take to grab dictatorial powers. And he’s not even waiting for it.

By Howie Severino
(There was a time when nearly everyone I knew was on EDSA on those magnificent days in February 1986, and shared an unspoken sacred bond. Today, three decades years later, most people around me were not there or not even born yet. Since recent history is so poorly taught in our schools, it has become easy for some to deny the glory of those years or even belittle what their fellow Filipinos achieved. )
The iconic image of EDSA people power is of nuns stopping tanks. I remember seeing that in the flesh, but my dominant memory from those four days on EDSA is of a battered blue pickup truck that I borrowed from my landlady.
It was February 22, 1986 when I attended a mass near my boarding house in Loyola Heights. Right after the mass, the priest, the now deceased Father Pat Lim, gathered a few parishioners to discuss the growing tension in the country. Then he told us to listen to breaking news on the radio. Radio Veritas – then nearly everyone’s source of breaking news that was not fake – was reporting that rebel soldiers had broken away from the Marcos regime and holed up in Camp Aguinaldo. And they were fearing annihilation.
Back in the boarding house where I rented space along with a couple of other young high school teachers, Radio Veritas’ June Keithley was filling the hallways with the latest updates. Cardinal Sin was calling on people to gather at EDSA to protect the rebel soldiers. A group of activists was marching from Cubao in the middle of the night. A fellow teacher, Yeyey Alfonso, and I decided to go.
It was eerily quiet on EDSA, and people were just trickling to the thoroughfare, then still years away from the MRT that would loom over it. If there was ever a chance to attack the besieged soldiers and nip people power in the bud, that was it. I saw Jimmy Ongpin, the firebrand corporate executive and leading critic of Marcos, sitting on a curb with his teen-age son Apa. “Come back tomorrow and tell your friends to come,” he said with a calm authority.
Back in the boarding house, I made a flurry of calls to my parents in the United States who were frightened for my safety, and to fellow teachers who wanted to meet up on EDSA. The next day morning, we learned that the crowd on EDSA was turning huge, and there was a call for drinking water and food. That was when Yeyey and I decided to borrow our landlady’s old blue pickup truck parked in the boarding house driveway. Our landlady Len did not hesitate to lend us the truck despite the risks; she was sympathetic to the cause along with nearly everyone else we knew.
We found drums, filled them with drinking water, and we were on our way (plastic bottles of water were not yet ubiquitous; tap water was still drinkable). We spent the next three days inching our way through the peaceful, spirited EDSA hordes, giving out drinking water to people who had not gone home, ordinary folks sharing cups and the latest news, some of which were early rumors that the Marcoses had already fled. People gave us cartons of hard-boiled eggs to distribute as well.
In those four days, EDSA was mostly a mammoth pedestrian lane where motor vehicles could not pass. Our blue pickup truck was one of the privileged few that the crowd would part for (otherwise, they could not get refills of their water containers). But it wasn’t just EDSA that we traversed but the side streets around Camp Aguinaldo where the crowds were thinner and more vulnerable to the loyalist tanks and Marines who were exploring weak points around the military camp.
The people on these side streets tended to be more hard-core because of the greater danger, some of them sutana-wearing seminarians and priests locking arms. They built improvised barricades. At one point, near the entrance to White Plains, as Yeyey and I were giving out water, a rumor rippled through the crowd that tanks and soldiers were approaching. A priest told us to place our pickup truck in the barricade! My nervous plea that the truck was not ours fell on deaf ears. I recall an armored column approaching later and then turning back after seeing the people with locked arms behind the barricade that featured a certain blue pickup truck. Someone took a photo of the truck at that moment, which was eventually shown to my landlady, who gasped before letting out a big laugh.
The beauty of people power was the participation of so many in a multitude of little things that mattered: not just swarming EDSA, but lending a pickup truck without hesitation, homes in Greenhills allowing us to refill water drums, the hard-boiled eggs, the seminarians who blocked even the side streets on the periphery of EDSA.
Yes, the periphery: the dominant EDSA narrative is about the main action on that highway and the players who made the headlines; yet for that peaceful political change to happen, the resistance had to permeate the periphery, and it had to precede 1986 in streets and hills all over the country. I’ve heard countless people living outside Manila at the time remind me that they too contributed to people power in places like Baguio, Davao, and even America. What electrified the world were televised images of determined common Filipinos who seemed willing to die in an act of civil disobedience. A friend living in Boston mailed me a bulging envelope full of US newspaper clippings about those four days. Travelling overseas in those post-February days in 1986, Filipinos were congratulated in airports upon presentation of their passports.
What ensued in the years that followed is up to the historians and the rest of us to ponder and debate. But what is clear at least in my mind is what took place in those four days: a creative, non-violent action among Filipinos that had not been seen before in our lifetimes, and a rare victory in our history. People united against a dictator, and won.
There was a time when nearly everyone I knew was on EDSA on those magnificent days in February, and shared an unspoken sacred bond. Today, three decades years later, most people around me were not there or not even born yet. Since recent history is so poorly taught in our schools, it has become easy for some to deny the glory of those years or even belittle what their fellow Filipinos achieved.
History buffs like to compare eras and generations. As great as Rizal and Bonifacio’s generation was, they did not win freedom for the country, falling under the wing of US colonizers after a brutal war. Neither did the gallant generation of Filipinos who fought against the Japanese in Bataan.
This is a biased opinion, but I want to throw it out there anyway, 32 years after victory: A case can be made that those in the resistance against martial law that culminated at EDSA comprise the nation’s greatest generation.
– Howie Severino

The 1986 EDSA/People Power incident was a perfect storm, a significant end to ruthless dictator. Lots of elements that helped it happened. I was marching against the dictatorship in Cebu during this time under the BAYAN banner with the BANDILA group in the making. The political scene was tense and everybody knew something was brewing since the people were slowly coming out from their shell of fear. It was quick when it happened; even Cory was stuck in Cebu when EDSA finally got started.
The people’s power revolution has been brewing for a while; it started when Ninoy got shot at NAIA. But when (then president) Marcos got hold of that coup planned against him, things begun to happen quickly. For me Enrile was probably trying to grab the power for himself with a little help from his friends, the RAM boys. Didn’t quite worked out as what he had planned then there was Doy Laurel; a traditional politician who was also vying for the top position amongst the divided opposition at that time. I was hoping for Butch Aquino since I have marched with him a few times when he comes to Cebu for the rallies. But Butch had no intention; he was just there marching like us to express his anger on what happened to Ninoy. And also there Joema from the Natdems (Jose Maria Sison) but he lost touch when he decided to boycott any election and still insisted that armed struggle was the only way. The opposition was really un-united and the only thing in common was the hatred for the Marcos and his Cronies. All of this was brewing when EDSA erupted suddenly. Everyone from Enrile, Ramos, Cardinal Sin, the various opposition groups and of course the people had decided.
Ninoy Aquino once said that whoever was the one to replace Marcos will really have a hard time. And this was because to the long damage that has been done to the gov’t, economy and the pillars of constitution. Lo and behold, Cory was nominated against her will at first but it turned out to be the best temporary alternative at that time, for the sake of unity.
Today the struggle continues since a new form of dictatorship is emerging on the horizon again.
We were marching then in Cebu under the Professional’s Forum group which was also under the Bayan banner. Bandila was in the process of splitting from Bayan but never took off due to the sudden EDSA incident. I have done my part way back, I’ve gambled back then but with no regrets, in fact I’ll do it again if given the opportunity today.